She went on and on. Passages ran off to the left and right of her, ran off to nowhere. On and on. From one such passage a nurse emerged, a pink phantom, silent and deliberate. Then, suddenly, Sophia was in her bed again, her high hospital bed. Looking down the enormous wavering length of her own sheeted form to the figure gliding by beyond the gleaming steel rail.

“Sister?” Her own voice was like a slow recording. Her lips were parched, her throat was terribly sore.

“You’re all right. Just try and get some sleep.”

“Where am I?”

Beyond the steel rail was the door—not the orange door of the hospital room but the hidden door at the end of the corridor.

“Mother?”

She was drifting towards it, drifting without volition as if she were floating ghostly above the ground. She did not want to go. She cried out against the irresistible tide.

“It’s all right, Sophia, it’s all right.”

Some cool hand was in hers, comforting. She looked up to see her sister. Laura, her real sister. Her small, sweet, worried face made big and blurry with her tears. Her blond hair tied back in a prim style … Perfect for a hospital visit, Sophia noted dimly.

“It’s all right,” Laura whispered again. “No one knows anything. It’s all been kept quiet. Daddy’s taken care of the whole stupid business for you.”

Sophia moved her lips. “There was so much blood.”

“Shh, it’s all in the past now, darling. No one knows anything.”

Sophia tried to smile and nod. Tried to martial her forces, cut through the sea. She wanted to be clear, to be Sophia again. But the warm undertow dragged her down.

“This is a nightmare,” she tried to whisper.

Because it was. The dreaded figure waiting for her, cowled, faceless in the dark at the end of the corridor, black, lifting its cloaked arms to receive her, looming larger and larger—she knew that specter—she did not want to see what she knew—she knew she was dreaming and did not want to dream—but she was drawn on and on by the overpowering tide, on and on down the corridor, past tapestries and portraits obscurely perceived, towards the cowled shape, waiting for her, lifting its arms, coming closer and closer until it slowly, slowly raised its face to her, its gory, empty sockets …

He will buy The Magi, Sophia. At any price.